My theory has long been that organized religion and "god belief" is evolved from the worship of human leaders/kings. There is much evidence of this in Egyptian religion.

Reading about the Sumerian origin myths, I had read the myths myself previously, but not any background or commentary on them, something struck me.

Could not these myths be describing a REAL period in time, when one of the first civilizations came to be, when human slaves were led by a sophisticated ruler who basically created the first civilization and started agriculture?

Could the Sumerian myth be the description of the origins of civilization?

I think that this is indeed possible!

The Sumerian myth describes clothed gods who create naked humans to do their work for them. The gods intentionally keep the people ignorant and their whole purpose in life was to work for the gods.

The Sumerian story of "creation" really appears to be this:

The story of an early slave based civilization, where naked slaves served elite rulers who tried to keep them ignorant, and then eventually these slaves integrated into the civilization.

Genesis is, of course, based on this story, and also retains elements such as God walking the Garden of Eden, which of course makes sense if "God" was a man.

Interesting, rationalrevolution. Of course, this sort of thing is always going to be extremely speculative: it’s really not going to be possible to nail down these origins, and they are pretty effectively lost in the mysts of time. But no doubt the Sumerian origin myths predate the Biblical ones, and many Biblical stories are most likely derived from the Sumerian, so why not Genesis too?